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Friday, February 15, 2013

Shit happens!

Did you know that this by-now proverbial piece of wisdom originated from the Forrest Gump movie?

I certainly didn't - and I've watched it a few times, too!

...Well, anyway.

My friends and roleplaying buddies have started a new campaign, set in the Marvel universe.

Now much as I love everything comics, superheroes have never been my cuppa - there's just something about the genre's whole concept that irks me beyond measure.

There has been a time when I was so desperate for my weekly RPG fix that I'd have ended up playing nevertheless, and hating every single minute spent at the gaming table. It happened before, that's how I know.

Yet luckily, we're having another game going on at the same time, and I love that one so much, I don't mind skipping the superz game.

So, since I'm getting free Friday evenings for a while, I thought I could put them to good use and test a few interesting-looking recipes I found on Pinterest.

Why, I told myself, I'll bake some outrageously good cupcakes and see if I can come up with a superheroes theme for them, because sooner or later I will be requested to decorate a cake for some nerdery I don't really care for, and I can use the challenge. And, should it turn up I can't, I'll still have my perfect cupcakes!

I knew right from the start I'd have to make chocolate cupcakes because Flavio, my uber-picky BFF, won't eat baked anything unless it's truly chocolate-heavy.

It is actually a doctored-up cake mix recipe, which should have rung a bell in the first place as one of my hugest baking débâcles, dating back to a time before this blog, featured cake mix as one of the ingredients.

I don't know, I just find mixes to be unpleasantly unpredictable... plus, it makes little sense for me to use them, because the American products most recipes call for aren't readily available in Italy and when I can find them at all, they cost me an arm and a leg - so making my batter from scratch is both easier and less expensive as far as I'm concerned.

But, this recipe sounded SO GOOD! I mean... Brownie Batter Chocolate Fudge Cupcakes, right? So I hunted down Betty Crocker's Devil's Food mix and set out to baking, only halving my measures as I managed to get hold of just one box.

The brownie balls had to be prepared in advance and frozen, which was a bummer - still, the dough tasted incredible. Things were definitely going as planned.

But when I baked the cupcakes proper... well, THIS is what happened.

Fail! Fail! OMG EPIC FAIL!

My cupcakes imploded; there's no nicer way to put it - unless I claim they were hit by meteor fragments, which would be bordering on bad taste seeing what happened in Russia earlier today.

I guess I'll simply take it like a brave soldier and keep them all to myself!

Now these cupcakes, they may not display a cute, gentle dome and soft brownie heart, but they're good as hell!

Even the "outer shells" I'm left with are definitely more brownie than cupcake, and I suspect they'll get even more brownie-like as they age (meaning: they're going to crust, not dry out.)

I think I'll crumble one into my granola and try it with milk, or yogurt maybe - also, I want to see what happens if I pour hot coffee into the crater. Oooh, and I could play around with ice cream, too!
WOOT! SCIENCE!

So, here's the moral of the story for you: shit happens, and that's a given. Then again: when life throws a cupcake fiasco at you, YOU GET TO EAT THE REMAINS! MWAHAHAHAHA!

...Right?

PS - Yes, I did have my superz decorations all done, but I'm not going to show them now - I'm saving them for another occasion, when I'll bake a new batch sticking to a tested, well-trusted recipe. I still have no idea what went wrong with this one - I made no weird substitutions for once! - but there are times when safe's better than sorry!